web design

This is an article I wrote years ago… I find that it still applies to today’s online world.

In today’s world, if you are in business, and you want people to take you seriously, then you need a website. The common response to needing a web site is to just throw up a couple of pages about who you are and what you do and then hope for the best. Unfortunately, because everyone and their aunt does that, your website tends to look and feel like everyone else’s, and your results end up being less than stellar in their performance. Before you put your first page out on the Internet, it is important to have a well-planned Internet Business Strategy. To improve your chances of receiving more exposure and business for your website, you should know these 5 important things before you ever begin to design your first web page.

1) Who is your target audience?
This isn’t just the generic term like “my target audience is people with money to spend”, but who is your target audience really? What are their likes and dislikes? What kind of words and phrases are their “hot buttons”? What are their fears, and what kinds of problems do they have? What services to they require in addition to yours? If you don’t have an answer to any one of these questions, then you don’t really know your target audience enough to target your website specifically to them.

2) What makes you different than anyone else in your field?
You are a unique individual and have your own special way of serving your clients. Why would someone want to do business with you instead of your competition? Remember, people buy experiences along with […]

In this weeks show, we talked with Bob McCool of arielMIS and the web design trends that are taking hold. We went over the following questions:

Question 1: Why are understanding trends in web design important?
Question 2: What are the trends you are seeing with website design now?
Question 3: What are some cool things I can be doing right now to spruce up my website?
Question 4: Is it important for my website to be trendy?
Question 5: What if I’m just getting started, can I do something affordable and effective?
Question 6: Content Management is a term we’re hearing a lot. Is Content Management important to consider when redesigning my website?
Question 7: Do I need to care about Mobile devices like the iPhone, Blackberry and Android when building my website?

Want to know more about web design trends? arielMIS provides a generous hour of consulting to all new customers. We encourage you to take advantage of this time to consult with us on what you are trying to accomplish and to help get you moving in the right direction.

B’s Bytes

B’s Bytes covered what must you do to get started the right way on your web site. Listen in for more!

In this radio episode, which aired Sept 16th 2009, we discussed the 5 things you need to know about your web site before you begin designing it. If you have already designed your web site, don’t despair, you can always make changes. It may just mean you would have to do some things over again.

What did we discuss specifically? Well, we discussed the following:

1) Who is your target audience

2) What makes you different than anyone else

3) How do you want people to find you

4) What do you want people to do once they get to your web site

5) How do you want to lead people through your web site.

The answers to these questions are discussed in detail on the radio show. Listen in for your audio education.

This last show was about some of the tools you can use to add functionality and flexibility to your web site. There are a number of content management systems you can add to your web site which will make adding content much easier as well as reducing the costs to maintain your web site.

Our show was about Joomla and WordPress. In this show, we discussed some of the plusses and minuses of each content managemet system, and when it would make sense to use one or the other of them. Listen in for the interview I did with Matt Weeden of matweedendesigns.com as we discuss this topic.

On our strategies show today, we discussed web design and how that can affect the success of a website. Some of the topics covered were Flash design and what are some of the best practices with using flash and when you should avoid using flash. We also spoke about the difference between web design and web programming.

An important focus of the show was the importance of information design and strategy. That is the concept of how you are presenting your information to your visitor. How are you doing your navigation, how are you speaking to your target audience, an what kinds of graphics are going to support your message.

One of the most powerful concepts of the show was how we as website owners really need to design the site for our target audience and we sometimes forget that fact. A great example that was mentioned was really understanding the kind of Internet connection your target audience would be most likely to have. If most of your audience is still on dialup, then your site can’t be filled with huge graphics and sound files because your visitors will leave long before they ever get a chance to see your site.

Many other topics were covered as well and the file will be posted shortly.